The Breakfast Battleground

Americans are increasingly living their lives on-the-go. This is especially true in the morning, when everyone is on the run. With more time spent at work, school, and other activities outside of the home, the desire to catch an extra sliver of sleep and grab a meal on-the-go is becoming more and more the norm. How can we satisfy consumers’ pleasure with the need for balance of nutrition and portability?

Symrise conducted a global product mapping of products that have been launched in the past 2 years. We identified few key platforms: Beverage, cookies, bars and snack mixes. Most of the product solutions in the beverage segment contain Oats and Proteins as well as a fair amount of Hispanic flavors. The emergence of these Hispanic flavors resonate with the in the US rapidly expanding Hispanic population. It is expected to reach 61 million individuals by 2018 (18.6 % of the US population) making it the fastest growing minority in the country. They are highly influential and are undoubtedly impacting the food and beverage industry.

In the cookies and bars segment, the main themes are sweets/fruits and protein. Within the Snack Mixes, products can be divided in bite size that are easy to eat on-the-go and in products that are focusing on Health and Convenience aspects.

In addition to the breakfast product mapping we looked into Breakfast insights to identify key opportunities for innovation for the breakfast day-part. Through our research we were able to identify opportunities especially for Millenials as well as several key product features and flavor insights.

Americans value ease and simplicity as well as portability. They also value health and nutrition, with an emphasis on protein. Millennials are lacking time for breakfast during the week compared to the general population. They over-index when it comes to trends such as “Best Being” and “Instant Everywhere” (Symrise/Gfk Roper). To appeal to Millennials for the Breakfast day-part, products should possess some key attributes. They prefer products that are healthy, on-the-go and contain protein. In addition, they fancy flavors like caramel and coffee.